World Bank Provides $ 500 Million For Power Transfer From Central To South Asia

Sunday, March 30, 2014
Kabul (BNA) The World Bank (WB) has pledged to provide an amount of $ 526 million financial assistance for transfer of power from central Asian states to south Asia.
The money will be shared between Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
The overall expenditures for the project have been estimated to 1.17 billion dollars and the two important institutions including Islamic Development Bank and USAID have pledged to pay the remaining amount.
With the implementation of this project, 1300 megawatt electricity would be transferred from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan power generation facilities to Afghanistan and onward to Pakistan.
This comes at a time that previously, the Afghan deputy minister of water and energy had said that on the basis of the plan, energy from central Asian states would be transferred to Pakistan via Afghanistan soil.
The project will make sure the transfer of 13, 00 megawatt electricity and Afghanistan will be able to use 300 megawatt power from the project.
The length of the project is about 1270 km with 563 in Afghan territory. Afghanistan will receive $ 80 million financial assistance from the project per annum.
The energy line lies through Sher Khan Bandar Port in northern Afghanistan and by passing from Pul-e-Khumri of Baghlan province will reach to Kabul and onward to neighboring Pakistan.
The government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan intends to execute some economic plan across the energy line which will cost 70 million dollars.
The US in Afghanistan has welcomed implementation of the project and in its Twitter page the US embassy officials have said that the US has provided $ 15 million to implement the project.